


promise maker, promise breaker

by fallencrest



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: He shows up on Dick's doorstep bleeding. It isn't the first time.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> I set this in a very vague, nebulous comics canon. I know my lovely giftee is more inclined towards the new 52 stuff but I have to confess I've not fully followed it the past few years. (I know, I know, I should hand in my fan card.) So I based this on a sort of Under the Red Hood era set-up but you really don't have to know anything more than the basics to follow this. Hope it works for you, geckoholic!

He shows up on Dick's doorstep bleeding. It isn't the first time.

Dick cleans the wound, sews him up, doesn't ask about it.

“You don't want to know?”

They have a rule about not asking. It always ends badly when Dick asks.

Dick doesn't want to know, so Jason doesn't say. But when he goes to leave Dick says “Stay”. 

There used to be a rule about that, too, but there isn't anymore. Dick says it's so Jason doesn't bleed out somewhere if the stitches don't hold. It's an easy lie that neither of them even pretends to believe.

Jason stays.

 

Dick made a promise once that he knew he'd never keep. A stupid, easy late night promise about how he wouldn't intervene. He doesn't intend to intervene. 

He follows Jason because he knows where he's going and because he knows the risks. He should be following Jason because he intends to stop him from committing murder and he knows he shouldn't follow him at all if he doesn't want to be implicated, morally, if he lets him do it. But that's not what he's afraid of. 

There's a nagging feeling somewhere in him, something he forgets sometimes but remembers other times as jarringly as missing a step going downstairs. He remembers, sometimes, that he walked away once and Jason ended up dead – or close enough that it makes no difference. He has no intention of doing that again. 

So, he saves Jason's life and maybe a few other lives too. And when Jason reminds him of the promise, he can at least say he didn't intervene until he had to – until there were 4 guns pointed at Jason and no other way he was getting out alive.

“You could thank me, you know.” Dick says, as he unties Jason's wrists and helps him to his feet. “I'm sure Alfred taught you how.”

“I could have handled it,” Jason says.

Dick, bitter, wants to ask whether by “handled it” Jason meant he could have managed to not-quite die all over again. Personally, he's pretty sure Jason shouldn't count on it.

“I won't tell Bruce if you don't,” Dick says, as he turns to leave.

Jason wants to say something but he forgot how to deal with family sometime down in the grave or maybe he never actually knew.

 

Dick comes home to find Jason sat at the end of his bed. The way his eyes check over Jason's body make it obvious he's looking for an injury. Jason looks tired but he doesn't look hurt exactly, no sign of puncture marks, ripped clothes, no blood spatter on the rug.   
“Hey,” Dick says, like it's normal, like they can just make conversation. They can't. But when he lifts Jason's chin with his hand and meets his eyes, he doesn't think they need to.

Jason kisses slow and deep, takes his time, and Dick's always wondered at that. He gets rough sometimes but there's always something patient and tender to him that Dick hasn't got used to expecting, even though he knows to expect it by now.

Jason pulls him down into his lap and holds him close, kisses across his jaw, down his neck, hiding his face there as he says “I missed you.”

“Missed you, too,” Dick says. He pushes off Jason's jacket, unzips his shirt, breathes “so much” into his skin.

He likes Jason like this. Jason penitent and tender and open as he ever gets. Jason who would give him anything, promise him anything, even if he'd never follow through. Somehow Dick never minds that he knows he'll never follow through. Just like he doesn't mind that he doesn't want to know why Jason's there to begin with. 

(He'd asked once “Did you kill someone tonight?” and the silence he received was more answer than he'd wanted. He knows that isn't why Jason comes to him every time and he knows that Jason doesn't come to him every time but there's a difference between knowing you're laying down with a murderer and becoming complicit by asking about it. 

He wanted to ask once if he was Jason's alibi. “Am I what you'll tell Bruce?” but they both know neither of them would ever tell and that there's no concealing the truth from Bruce anyway. Bruce always finds the bodies; there's never any point in burying them.)

 

Jason has him at gunpoint and Dick says “it doesn't have to be this way.”

Jason says, “it really does.” 

Dick wonders what the probability of him getting out of this without having to watch Jason kill someone is. His calculations are ruined when Bruce busts in through a window. 

He gets catching Jason duty. He's pretty sure Bruce knows he lets him get away.

 

He wakes up and Jason is still there. Dick is pretty sure they made an agreement about that, too, but neither of them have ever been good at sticking to the plan.

Dick is the kind of half asleep where he can kiss Jason's shoulder blades but hasn't quite realised yet that he shouldn't, when he says “you could come home you know.” His hands roam over warm skin, and he is the kind of half asleep where he can imagine that Jason's silence means “yes” even though he knows it doesn't.

“I think we can take the stitches out now,” he says, later, when Jason is half-dressed already, catching sight of the soon to be covered stretch of ribs. 

“Next time,” Jason says.

Dick says he'd better make it soon. 

Jason doesn't bother to make yet another promise he won't keep.


End file.
